Post by Wayne Hall on Apr 24, 2010 9:37:54 GMT -5
Hands off Mother Earth
Thu, 22 Apr 2010
Dear Friends
Its Earth Day and this is an email asking you to take a few minutes to consider supporting a very important campaign for the future of this planet of ours. Its called the Hands Off Mother Earth campaign and i've had some hand in getting it started and now i'm asking for your help in keeping it moving..
I should start by acknowledging that I am not the sort of person who ever writes to all my friends, colleagues. allies and acquaintances asking them to support some cause or other - to do so makes me uncomfortable even though i work in the field of social change. But i'm doing so now because I think this is one of the most urgent and timely yet so far unknown campaigns I can imagine.
'Hands Off Mother Earth' is a campaign to stop geoengineering experiments with our planet. Geoengineering refers to large scale proposals to tinker with the seas, skies and soils of the planet in order to try to artificially counteract global warming - for example by releasing large artificial volcano plumes of sulphur particles so that sunlight bounces back out of the atmosphere before it warms anything or dumping nutrients or minerals into the world's oceans to change their chemistry or grow vast plankton blooms as a way of absorbing excess carbon dioxide.
These ideas might sound crazy, risky and implausible (they are) but what is scaring the living bejesus out of me these days is how supposedly sober minded institutions and individuals have begun parroting an argument that open-air experiments of these techniques should commence very soon. In fact in some cases they have already commenced. The UK Parliament and the US Congress are both holding hearings which assume as a starting point that a large amount of government funds will soon be flowing to carry out geoengineering tests. Private companies are already set up to carry out these experiments and millions of dollars are already being invested by men (mostly men) such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson who want a technical fix for climate change so that we don't have to reduce our global emissions or alter business as usual..
This morning, in Cochabamba Bolivia at a meeting of 11000 indigenous people, environmental groups and government representative, we finally launched this global campaign to say no to geoengineering experiments. We called it Hands Off Mother Earth or the H.O.M.E. campaign. At the same time we switched on a website (that i'd been working through the night on for several nights now) where individuals can join up to the campaign and visibly express their opposition to letting our one home, Earth, be used as an open air laboratory. Within hours we started getting messages of support from very well known environmentalists such as David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, Maude Barlow, Herman Daly - and hundreds of photos from individuals holding up their hand in a stop gesture. We also launched a facebook site which is gathering names too.
Just as previous generations said no to testing nuclear weapons and toxic chemicals on our already much abused planet, I feel that generations alive from today onwards are going to need to say ever more clearly to their governments that geoengineering the planet is not acceptable. This campaign is the beginning of that long and difficult struggle to hold back these mad schemes, to limit and hopefully arrest the damage they are going to do in the coming years. I really very much hope that you feel willing and concerned enough to take a few minutes to check out our new website, join up and let others know about this campaign. to get this movement going in a small but human way... one person at a time talking to another person.
There are lots of good reasons to oppose geoengineering tests - they are risky, unjust, unrecallable, potentially unstoppable, they play with systems we barely understand and give immense power to those who caused our global problems in the first place while distracting money and political will from the real solutions and hard work we need to start putting in place to redress the damage so far. These real solutions are often social solutions, not technological fixes. However in the last few days stumbling back and forth to the office one seemingly trivial but kind of iconic reason to oppose geoengineering has started to haunt me.
The most favoured geoengineering schemes that some governments, companies and scientists are now itching to test involves polluting the upper atmosphere with clouds of particles of either sulphur or aluminium to reflect heat and light away from the planet. Doing so mimics big volcanoes which have been shown to reduce global warming but also change weather and cause monsoons to fail leading to drought and hunger. But volcanologists also speculate that if this geoengineering scheme was implemented it would likely change the colour of the skies from deep blue to a lighter whitish blue.
Personally I love looking at blue skies. We had some today here in Montreal - they are calming and meaningful and real in an increasingly unreal world and the idea that my 2 daughters, might grow up to skies that are no longer blue and have to tell their kids from childhood memory about what blue skies were like makes me almost cry as I write this. I realise its a small non-harmful thing stacked up against all the hunger and greed and injustice in the world but its additional to all that - taking a way a little bit of beauty thats freely available and distributed. Anyway i'd really encourage you to think about it. Personally it breaks my heart.
Please consider going to our new website and uploading a picture saying you support our campaign to stop geoengineering tests - even if you don't feel you know enough about the crazy science behind messing with the planet - consider it a vote on whether you want to keep the sky blue.
htttp://www.handsoffmotherearth.org
or www.bit.ly/homefb to join the facebook group
Thanks for reading this. Happy Earth Day!
best
Jim
--------------------------
News Release - 21st April 2010 - For Immediate Release
Hands Off Mother Earth!
Civil Society Groups announce new global campaign against geoengineering tests – urge public to join in.
www.handsoffmotherearth.org
Cochabamba Bolivia. - On the eve of UN Mother Earth Day, over sixty national and international organizations today threw their weight behind a common statement launching a global campaign to prevent real world deployment of geoengineering experiments.
Geoengineering refers to large-scale intentional tinkering with the climate and earth systems to counteract global warming. The ‘Hands Off Mother Earth’ campaign (or H.O.M.E. campaign) regards such geoengineering schemes as dangerous and unjust. It is urging individuals and organizations to speak out in opposing them.
“With rich governments and industrial interests jockeying for open-air geoengineering tests it is time to draw a line that should not be crossed.” affirmed Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group, Mexico. “Mother Earth is our common home whose integrity should never be violated by geoengineering experimentation - it should never be a laboratory for these risky and unjust schemes.”
Ben Powless of the Mohawk Nation (Canada) representing the Indigenous Environmental Network explained:
"For too long our peoples' bodies and lands have been used to test new technologies. Now, in response to climate change, these same people want to put Mother Earth at risk with geoengineering technologies. We can't afford to threaten our planet in this way, especially when simple, just and proven solutions are at hand."
Ricardo Navarro, from CESTA, El Salvador speaking on behalf of Friends of the Earth International, said:
"The same countries and companies that have neglected climate change for decades, are now proposing very risky geoengineering technologies that could further disrupt the weather, peoples and ecosystems. For them geoengineering is a "perfect" excuse to claim they can keep on heating the planet because later they will cool it off with dangerous experiments. As global environmental movements, we cannot allow the geoengineers to experiment with the planet and its peoples."
Launched in Cochabamba Bolivia at the Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth, the H.O.M.E campaign features an interactive website www.handsoffmotherearth.org where individuals can ‘lend a hand’ to the campaign, leaving messages and uploading images of themselves. The site features a public portrait gallery of individuals with open palms calling a halt to geoengineering. This gallery is expected to swell as the focus of the campaign moves from Cochabamba this week to upcoming UN talks culminating in the next meeting of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun Mexico in December. A facebook group for the H.O.M.E. campaign has also been launched.
“We do not need to test geoengineering because we know that it is a fundamentally unjust technology” asserted Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group speaking at the campaign launch. “Could you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that the governments who have spent decades denying or avoiding climate change; who have failed to meet even the minimal requirements of the Kyoto Accord; who lack the courage to tell their societies to change their lifestyles; have either the integrity or the intellect to manipulate the oceans or the stratosphere in any way that could be either environmentally-effective or socially-equitable for the world? Should their hand be on the global thermostat?”
A press conference launching the campaign in Cochabamba will be held today 21st April at 4pm Edificio del Rectorado y Vicerectorado, Planta Baja - UNIVALLE. (Sala de Prensa)
The website of the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign can be viewed online at www.handsoffmotherearth.org The list of organizations and individuals signing the campaign statement can be found at this address. A Spanish language websitehttp://www.NomanipulenlaMadreTierra.org will follow shortly.
The Facebook page is public and can be joined at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115648685121721
Background Notes:
The Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E.) Campaign has been established in response to clear indications that government, military and industrial players are attempting to move the climate debate towards embracing geoengineering as a “Plan B” to supplement action on emission reductions:
• Last year Russian scientists led by controversial climatologist Yuri Izrael, a key science advisor to President Vladimir Putin, announced they had undertaken the first outdoor experiment to release sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere for geoengineering purposes. They hinted that larger follow up experiments were in the offing.
• In September 2009, a panel of geoengineering advocates convened by the UK’s Royal Society published an influential report calling on governments to contribute millions of dollars towards establishing a ten year international programme of geoengineering research – including real world field trials.
• Since 2007 former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has channeled millions of dollars of private funds to several teams of geoengineering researchers. Microsoft’s former chief technical officer, Nathan Myhrvold, has also become an outspoken champion of the field. Myhrvold’s firm Intellectual Ventures already has several patents pending on geoengineering techniques.
• In the past six months the Science Committees of the UK House of Commons and US Congress have held joint committee hearings into establishing a geoengineering research programme, including outdoor experimentation.
• In March 2010, 175 self-selected geoengineers from 14 countries met in Asilomar California to develop “voluntary guidelines” for experiments in geoengineering the planet. The meeting was organized by a group associated with the commercial geoengineering firm Climos Inc. Over seventy civil society groups issued an open letter opposing the aims of this meeting.
For further information about geoengineering or the H.O.M.E. campaign visit www.handsoffmotherearth.org
Thu, 22 Apr 2010
Dear Friends
Its Earth Day and this is an email asking you to take a few minutes to consider supporting a very important campaign for the future of this planet of ours. Its called the Hands Off Mother Earth campaign and i've had some hand in getting it started and now i'm asking for your help in keeping it moving..
I should start by acknowledging that I am not the sort of person who ever writes to all my friends, colleagues. allies and acquaintances asking them to support some cause or other - to do so makes me uncomfortable even though i work in the field of social change. But i'm doing so now because I think this is one of the most urgent and timely yet so far unknown campaigns I can imagine.
'Hands Off Mother Earth' is a campaign to stop geoengineering experiments with our planet. Geoengineering refers to large scale proposals to tinker with the seas, skies and soils of the planet in order to try to artificially counteract global warming - for example by releasing large artificial volcano plumes of sulphur particles so that sunlight bounces back out of the atmosphere before it warms anything or dumping nutrients or minerals into the world's oceans to change their chemistry or grow vast plankton blooms as a way of absorbing excess carbon dioxide.
These ideas might sound crazy, risky and implausible (they are) but what is scaring the living bejesus out of me these days is how supposedly sober minded institutions and individuals have begun parroting an argument that open-air experiments of these techniques should commence very soon. In fact in some cases they have already commenced. The UK Parliament and the US Congress are both holding hearings which assume as a starting point that a large amount of government funds will soon be flowing to carry out geoengineering tests. Private companies are already set up to carry out these experiments and millions of dollars are already being invested by men (mostly men) such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson who want a technical fix for climate change so that we don't have to reduce our global emissions or alter business as usual..
This morning, in Cochabamba Bolivia at a meeting of 11000 indigenous people, environmental groups and government representative, we finally launched this global campaign to say no to geoengineering experiments. We called it Hands Off Mother Earth or the H.O.M.E. campaign. At the same time we switched on a website (that i'd been working through the night on for several nights now) where individuals can join up to the campaign and visibly express their opposition to letting our one home, Earth, be used as an open air laboratory. Within hours we started getting messages of support from very well known environmentalists such as David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, Maude Barlow, Herman Daly - and hundreds of photos from individuals holding up their hand in a stop gesture. We also launched a facebook site which is gathering names too.
Just as previous generations said no to testing nuclear weapons and toxic chemicals on our already much abused planet, I feel that generations alive from today onwards are going to need to say ever more clearly to their governments that geoengineering the planet is not acceptable. This campaign is the beginning of that long and difficult struggle to hold back these mad schemes, to limit and hopefully arrest the damage they are going to do in the coming years. I really very much hope that you feel willing and concerned enough to take a few minutes to check out our new website, join up and let others know about this campaign. to get this movement going in a small but human way... one person at a time talking to another person.
There are lots of good reasons to oppose geoengineering tests - they are risky, unjust, unrecallable, potentially unstoppable, they play with systems we barely understand and give immense power to those who caused our global problems in the first place while distracting money and political will from the real solutions and hard work we need to start putting in place to redress the damage so far. These real solutions are often social solutions, not technological fixes. However in the last few days stumbling back and forth to the office one seemingly trivial but kind of iconic reason to oppose geoengineering has started to haunt me.
The most favoured geoengineering schemes that some governments, companies and scientists are now itching to test involves polluting the upper atmosphere with clouds of particles of either sulphur or aluminium to reflect heat and light away from the planet. Doing so mimics big volcanoes which have been shown to reduce global warming but also change weather and cause monsoons to fail leading to drought and hunger. But volcanologists also speculate that if this geoengineering scheme was implemented it would likely change the colour of the skies from deep blue to a lighter whitish blue.
Personally I love looking at blue skies. We had some today here in Montreal - they are calming and meaningful and real in an increasingly unreal world and the idea that my 2 daughters, might grow up to skies that are no longer blue and have to tell their kids from childhood memory about what blue skies were like makes me almost cry as I write this. I realise its a small non-harmful thing stacked up against all the hunger and greed and injustice in the world but its additional to all that - taking a way a little bit of beauty thats freely available and distributed. Anyway i'd really encourage you to think about it. Personally it breaks my heart.
Please consider going to our new website and uploading a picture saying you support our campaign to stop geoengineering tests - even if you don't feel you know enough about the crazy science behind messing with the planet - consider it a vote on whether you want to keep the sky blue.
htttp://www.handsoffmotherearth.org
or www.bit.ly/homefb to join the facebook group
Thanks for reading this. Happy Earth Day!
best
Jim
--------------------------
News Release - 21st April 2010 - For Immediate Release
Hands Off Mother Earth!
Civil Society Groups announce new global campaign against geoengineering tests – urge public to join in.
www.handsoffmotherearth.org
Cochabamba Bolivia. - On the eve of UN Mother Earth Day, over sixty national and international organizations today threw their weight behind a common statement launching a global campaign to prevent real world deployment of geoengineering experiments.
Geoengineering refers to large-scale intentional tinkering with the climate and earth systems to counteract global warming. The ‘Hands Off Mother Earth’ campaign (or H.O.M.E. campaign) regards such geoengineering schemes as dangerous and unjust. It is urging individuals and organizations to speak out in opposing them.
“With rich governments and industrial interests jockeying for open-air geoengineering tests it is time to draw a line that should not be crossed.” affirmed Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group, Mexico. “Mother Earth is our common home whose integrity should never be violated by geoengineering experimentation - it should never be a laboratory for these risky and unjust schemes.”
Ben Powless of the Mohawk Nation (Canada) representing the Indigenous Environmental Network explained:
"For too long our peoples' bodies and lands have been used to test new technologies. Now, in response to climate change, these same people want to put Mother Earth at risk with geoengineering technologies. We can't afford to threaten our planet in this way, especially when simple, just and proven solutions are at hand."
Ricardo Navarro, from CESTA, El Salvador speaking on behalf of Friends of the Earth International, said:
"The same countries and companies that have neglected climate change for decades, are now proposing very risky geoengineering technologies that could further disrupt the weather, peoples and ecosystems. For them geoengineering is a "perfect" excuse to claim they can keep on heating the planet because later they will cool it off with dangerous experiments. As global environmental movements, we cannot allow the geoengineers to experiment with the planet and its peoples."
Launched in Cochabamba Bolivia at the Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth, the H.O.M.E campaign features an interactive website www.handsoffmotherearth.org where individuals can ‘lend a hand’ to the campaign, leaving messages and uploading images of themselves. The site features a public portrait gallery of individuals with open palms calling a halt to geoengineering. This gallery is expected to swell as the focus of the campaign moves from Cochabamba this week to upcoming UN talks culminating in the next meeting of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun Mexico in December. A facebook group for the H.O.M.E. campaign has also been launched.
“We do not need to test geoengineering because we know that it is a fundamentally unjust technology” asserted Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group speaking at the campaign launch. “Could you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that the governments who have spent decades denying or avoiding climate change; who have failed to meet even the minimal requirements of the Kyoto Accord; who lack the courage to tell their societies to change their lifestyles; have either the integrity or the intellect to manipulate the oceans or the stratosphere in any way that could be either environmentally-effective or socially-equitable for the world? Should their hand be on the global thermostat?”
A press conference launching the campaign in Cochabamba will be held today 21st April at 4pm Edificio del Rectorado y Vicerectorado, Planta Baja - UNIVALLE. (Sala de Prensa)
The website of the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign can be viewed online at www.handsoffmotherearth.org The list of organizations and individuals signing the campaign statement can be found at this address. A Spanish language websitehttp://www.NomanipulenlaMadreTierra.org will follow shortly.
The Facebook page is public and can be joined at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115648685121721
Background Notes:
The Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E.) Campaign has been established in response to clear indications that government, military and industrial players are attempting to move the climate debate towards embracing geoengineering as a “Plan B” to supplement action on emission reductions:
• Last year Russian scientists led by controversial climatologist Yuri Izrael, a key science advisor to President Vladimir Putin, announced they had undertaken the first outdoor experiment to release sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere for geoengineering purposes. They hinted that larger follow up experiments were in the offing.
• In September 2009, a panel of geoengineering advocates convened by the UK’s Royal Society published an influential report calling on governments to contribute millions of dollars towards establishing a ten year international programme of geoengineering research – including real world field trials.
• Since 2007 former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has channeled millions of dollars of private funds to several teams of geoengineering researchers. Microsoft’s former chief technical officer, Nathan Myhrvold, has also become an outspoken champion of the field. Myhrvold’s firm Intellectual Ventures already has several patents pending on geoengineering techniques.
• In the past six months the Science Committees of the UK House of Commons and US Congress have held joint committee hearings into establishing a geoengineering research programme, including outdoor experimentation.
• In March 2010, 175 self-selected geoengineers from 14 countries met in Asilomar California to develop “voluntary guidelines” for experiments in geoengineering the planet. The meeting was organized by a group associated with the commercial geoengineering firm Climos Inc. Over seventy civil society groups issued an open letter opposing the aims of this meeting.
For further information about geoengineering or the H.O.M.E. campaign visit www.handsoffmotherearth.org